Bucco Fever

Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have Baseball!

Mar 2

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments

It’s official folks.  The Pirates kicked off their exhibition season today with a game against the hated Manatees, currently in progress.  I realize they are playing against a community college team, but Pedro Alvarez already has an RBI double.  Tomorrow, things get started for real against the New York Yankees.  From what I can tell, that game will be broadcast on the MLB Network, but I could be wrong about that.  The entire spring schedule can be found here.

In other “news” the Pirates chose to renew the contracts of 28 players with 0-3 years of service time.  This  move is, more or less, just a formality.

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Explaining FIP to Your Girl Friend

Feb 24

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments 

This is the first in a series explaining baseball statistical concepts at a basic level.  The intro post, with background info as well as updated links to other posts in the series as they are added can be found here.

FIP is a statistic designed to measure a pitchers performance, based only on the things that he has direct control.  The term actually stands for Fielding Independent Pitching, the idea being that if you can eliminate the effects of the defense and other factors beyond the pitchers control, you can properly measure a pitchers true value.  The statistic is scaled to ERA…

Wait, what is ERA?

ERA stands or Earned Run Average, which is exactly what it says it is, the average number of earned runs a pitcher gives up per 9 innings.  And before you ask, an earned run is any run given up by the pitcher except for those caused by errors.  ERA is the most common statistic used to measure pitchers.  The formula is simply the number of earned runs allowed divided by the number of innings pitched times 9, (ER/IP)*9.  So if you allow three earned runs in 6 innings, your ERA is 4.50.

OK, back to FIP.  It’s scaled to ERA for two reasons.  The first is so that you can compare a pitchers ERA and his FIP.  If his FIP is lower than his ERA, its likely because he had a good defense playing behind him, though there can be other reasons.  Conversely, if FIP is higher than ERA, the opposite can be concluded.  Sometimes people will say a pitcher was “lucky” or “unlucky” based on a comparison of ERA and FIP, though I personally don’t agree with that assessment.

The second reason FIP is scaled to ERA is to provide an easy frame of reference for fans and analysts.  Since ERA is so common, people already know what is good and bad.  An ERA below 3.50 or so is considered, while an ERA above 5.00 is considered bad, etc.  This prior knowledge is automatically transferred to FIP, without having to learn a new scale in order to evaluate what the numbers mean.

So how do you calculate FIP?

There a 6 variables involved in FIP.  Home Runs (HR), Walks (BB), Innings Pitched (IP), Strike Outs (K), Hit Batsman (HBP), and Intentional Walks (IBB).  The Formula is as follows:

(HR*13+(BB+HBP-IBB)*3-K*2)/IP

A league and year specific Scaling factor is then added so that the average FIP matches the average ERA for a given season.  Generally speaking, the scaling factor is very close to 3.2, and when doing home calculations, its usually safe to use 3.2.

Where can i find more info?

A good place to start is this fangraphs post explaining FIP as it relates to pitcher win values.  These is also this wikipedia article that explains the origins of defense indpentant pitching statistics.  I’m sure there are also lost of other good source that can be found via Google.

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Explaining Baseball Statistics To Your Girl Friend

Feb 24

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments

I’m putting up a post tonight that I intend to be the first in a series of posts so I thought a little background was in order.  My girl friend, even before we ever started dating, liked baseball in the same way that most girls do.  She liked going to the games, in her words “mostly for the beer and hot dogs.”  She had played softball in her youth and understood the basic rules of the game, but anything more advanced than balls, strikes and outs went right over her head.  I, on the other hand, love everything about baseball and try my hardest to understand all the intricacies and statistics of the game.  Naturally, I talk about this stuff a lot, especially when we are at a game together, and naturally she doesn’t understand some of it, so I try my best to explain it to her.  Out of those conversations, I had an idea to write a series of posts explaining some advanced statistical concepts as I would explain them if I was talking to my girl friend.  The goal is to have a set of primers that can be used to help explain these concepts to anyone unfamiliar with them, breaking everything down into its component parts, and then building back up to a level of basic understanding.  In light of my post the other day about Zach Duke’s performance before and after August 1st, I thought FIP would be a good place to start and that will be posted shortly.  I’ll try to keep this post updated with a list as I add more to the series, although don’t expect a new post every day, or even every week.  I’ll write them as a I feel like it, and hopefully, overtime, develop a rather complete set of primers/tutorials.  As always, I welcome any feedback, good or bad, and you can leave that in the comments or by emailing me.

FIP

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A few quick notes

Feb 24

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments

I posted a few weeks back about an nl-only keeper league I’m starting.  That post can be found here, and I’m stilling for a few more players to round out the league, if your at all interested, let me know and I’ll send you an invite.

Also, I really enjoyed this feature in today’s Post-Gazette about Brandon Moss.  Maybe I never heard about his knee surgery in late 2008, or maybe I had just completely forgotten about it, but that info helps put into light some of his struggles last year.  Due to those very struggles, he’s going to have an awful lot to prove in order to make the team this spring (and since he’s out of options, if he doesn’t make the team he will almost certainly end up with another organization).  If he can somehow make the team though, he strikes me as a very like-able player who could become a fan favorite if he can just take advantage of his considerable talent.  Where he fits in the corner outfield mix along with GFJ, Church, Milledge, Tabata, etc. is anyones guess, all I’m saying is that I’m rooting for him.

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Spring Training Ramblings

Feb 23

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments

Spring training is almost a week old at this point.  All the players are in camp, and today was the first full squad workout, so I thought it was time I posted on what’s been going on so far down in Bradenton, mostly by linking to various other outlets.

About a week ago I posted about Joel Hanrahan’s injury.  Today we got some good news on that front, as it was announced that his latest MRI revealed no structural damage to his injured throwing elbow.  There is still no hard time-table given for his return, but the terms “dissipating inflamation” and “no structural damage” are both very good things, and should mean he’ll be back sooner rather than later.

This one is behind a pay-wall, ESPN insiders only, but Buster Olney seems very bullish on the potential of this Pirates line-up, especially the power potential of Garrett Jones and Pedro Alvarez.  There is also a note in there about Paul Maholm altering his pre-game routine to conserve his energy for later innings.

Just heard this now, literally as I was writing this post.  Charlie Wilmouth of BucsDugout is going to be on the FanGraphs Audio podcast (they mention it at the end of the linked episode) on Thursday.

I’m not quite sure what it is about this pirates administration, but I think they have a tendency to get caught up in the moment and speak a bit more freely than they should be.  The latest example of this, Frank Coonelly today says that “2010 is the beginning of the next dynasty of the Pirates.”  Really?  I truly believe this team is heading in the right direction, but Dynasty?  As they say on NFL PrimeTime, Come on, Man!  Edit: I forgot to note this originally, but in that same post, Chuck Finder also adds that Neal Walker is being turned into a super-utility player, something I’ve speculated about in the past.

Finally, something I really enjoyed seeing this week was this tweet from Rob Biertempfel about the energy CF Andrew McCutchen gives this team.  Looking back to when he was called up last year, and that was expected of him at that time, he has met or exceeded all of it.  Its easy to dream on how great a player this kid can be, and I’m glad to hear that he’s the one providing the team its energy.

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